High impact Instructional Strategies

From Visible Learning for Literacy: Implementing the Practices that Work Best to Accelerate Student Learning By Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie This book synthesizes over 1,200 meta-analyses, with over 70,000 studies and 300 million students. The book describes  a variety of high-impact, deep literacy instructional strategies and then identifies the effective size (the positive or negative change of student achievement). You will see the ranking, the instructional strategy, the effect size (positive change), and examples in practice. In terms of effective size, anything over 0.8 is considered high impact; anything over 0.5 is considered moderate impact; anything over 0.2 is considered small impact. An effect size of 0.4 indicates that, on average, the student gained a year’s worth of growth for a year in school. This is the expectation for instruction and intervention. We’ll focus on the strategies that have a greater effect size than the expectation. To understand the high impact measure, effect size is measured by: Effect Size = AVERAGE (POSTASSESSMENT) - AVERAGE (PREASSESSMENT)AVERAGE STANDARD DEVIATION (or appx. average change) Which high-impact instructional strategies are you employing in your classroom? Rank Instructional Strategy Effect Size Example in practice 1 Self-reported grades / student expectations 1.44 Before an exam, ask your class to write down what score they each expect to achieve. Use this information to engage the student to try to perform even better. After the exam, ask them to score their work on the rubric. 3 Response to intervention 1.28 Maintain clear records of student performance data (data and observations); develop intervention plans based on student need. 5 Providing formative evaluation 0.9 Give descriptive feedback to students. Engage them in discussion on: What is the goal? Where are you in relation to it? What can you do to close the gap? 6 Micro-teaching 0.88 Do you have a procedure to reflect on your own practice? Do you ask to be observed and build off feedback? Do you video record yourself and analyze potential growth? Do you strive to learn from other teachers? 7 Classroom discussion 0.82 Create a series of questions for the students to think about. Do you ensure that ALL students participate equally? Allocate enough time in the lesson for an elaborate discussion. Make sure that students can freely express their opinion without being laughed at or ridiculed. 9 Teacher clarity 0.75 Do you clearly articulate (orally and in writing) the learning goals (language objectives and content standards) and the success criteria (rubrics)? 10 Feedback 0.75 When providing feedback, teachers must answer three feedback questions: “What do students need to know and be able to do? How will the students and I know when they are successful? What learning experiences will facilitate their success?” Constantly ask the students in order to maximize the feedback from the learner back to the teacher. 11 Reciprocal teaching 0.74 Do you engage students in peer/group learning in a structured cooperative learning team? Do students support each other in language and content learning? 14 Metacognitive strategies 0.69 After a lesson, do you ask your students to reflect on what strategies they used to acquire the skills and knowledge today? Do you model and instruct strategies about how you think? 17 Vocabulary programs 0.67 Do you have a vocabulary system in your classroom? A word wall with explicit vocabulary instruction? Do you identify and consider how to instruct them before the lesson?

Why do we want to emphasize deep literacy learning?

posted Nov 9, 2016, 10:43 AM by Ryan Zak   [ updated Nov 11, 2016, 6:41 AM ]

Imagine these two different classroom scenarios: In scenario A, students all read the same text while completing a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet that asks students to insert vocabulary words into sentences on the test. For homework, they must look up the dictionary definition of the word and then copy it into their vocabulary notebook. In scenario A, the teacher has all of the knowledge and guides the students through the very specific things that they are supposed to learn. In scenario B, the teacher provides an interactive learning day where students create skits to demonstrate understanding of key vocabulary before the teacher invites students to develop a presentation that incorporates the key words to teach classmates about a key concept while making an argument about a pressing problem in their world and a suggested solution. While scenario A and scenario B both students interact with key concepts and vocabulary, scenario A guides students on a singular learning path while scenario B invites students to extend their learning and find authentic applications to improve their lives. This blog will emphasize and analyze concepts from Visible Learning for Literacy: Implementing the Practices that Work Best to Accelerate Student Learning by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie (2016). Why do we want to emphasize deep literacy learning? Fisher, Frey, and Hattie (2016) explain, “Surface learners are described as relying on memorization and are concerned about failure; therefore, they are risk-averse. Deep learners, on the other hand, seek to interact with content and ideas, and actively link concepts and knowledge across content” (p. 73). In other words, surface level learners memorize the facts and procedures to ensure their success on a singular test while deep level learning develop the skills and knowledge that they transfer into their life as skills and knowledge meaningful to solving a variety of real problems. Furthermore, Fisher, Frey, and Hattie contend that, “Society prizes those who delve deeper into issues and problems that have vexed mankind. The ability to hang with a problem requires persistence and a certain amount of confidence in one’s ability to eventually arrive at a solution,” (p.72). In pay and prestige, the economy continues to reward people who dwell persistently on vexing problems until they develop new and innovative solutions. In pay and prestige, the architect that develops a unique models makes more than the construction crew who follow explicit instructions; the civil engineer earns more for designing neighborhood than the construction crew that follows the plans; Steve Jobs earned more than all of the technical manufactures who built thousands of iPhones according to a plan. Therefore, if deep learning is more leveragable and powerful, how can we ensure that deep level learning occurs throughout literacy instruction? In class, we have all dedicated too many hours to designing that amazing lesson that incorporates their interests and challenges teams of students to work together to solve a problem just beyond their current capability. I can only speak for myself, however, I have also designed that same lesson and burrowed my face into my hands when the students leave after a period in which they did not rise up to the challenge, didn’t use self-advocacy to delve into the depth of the learning, and turned in work that was far from my expectation of success. Fisher, Frey, and Hattie outline (2016) three dimensions of general literacy practices that transcend content-area but are quintessential for ongoing student success (p. 21). Challenge We must design learning experiences that are challenging to students. Equally important, we must help students develop strategies to overcome challenges, to persevere through challenges in order to harness mistakes into learning opportunities. Self-efficacy We must design instruction to help develop students’ self-efficacy: their ability and motivation to use strategies to strengthen their learning when it is hard. Learning involves complicated tasks with complicated texts in which students must experiences small moments of error, failure, or challenge. Through these errors and challenges, students learn and improve. Therefore, since we know that overcoming errors is quintessential, how can we support student learning focused not only on content but, equally important, on the development of self-efficacy skills Learning intentions with success criteria Before each lesson, students must be engaged in the construction of the answers to the following three questions: What am I learning today? Why am I learning this? How will I know that I learned it? When we invite students into the discussion on the purpose (the why), we develop their motivation for learning and provide them meaningful contexts in which they can transfer the skills and knowledge from the lesson. Furthermore, when students know what they are supposed to learn and understand how they will demonstrate learning, students should also be accountable for reflecting on their own learning. When students reflect on their own learning, they take intrinsic responsibility for their learning: they feel empowered as the constructor of learning rather than the passive receiver of knowledge/skills.